Money is great, but need more officers: Surrey anti-gang program leader

The Manager of Safe Schools in the Surrey School District is welcoming $270,000 in provincial funding to go towards its anti-gang program, but says more boots on the ground are also needed.

Currently, only two Surrey RCMP officers are dedicated to the Wrap-around program.

Rob Rai says while they will lobby Chief Superintendent Bill Fordy for more officers, the cash infusion will go towards hiring more district staff.

“I spoke with the Wrap team today, and they are just salivating at some of the expansion here, because it means we can do better work right, when I am asking staff to carry 12 cases instead of 10, it means that they wait list is cut in half, this year alone we will get ahead of 20 more kids, from now until December.”

CKNW reported last week 40 kids are on the waitlist to get into the program, which helps at-risk youth who show signs of gang-associated behavior.

Trixie to the rescue. $270,000 is the perfect trophy amount to make public.
It would cost way too much money to hire another two full-time officers. Each officer would most likely make around $80,000, when you add in benefits etc, you would be looking at well over $125,000 per year, per officer.
Much easier to throw a one-time $270,000 at the issue, and it gives the false appearance that it is being dealt with. Pretty clever spin by Trixie and Co.

It is unlikely that throwing money at this will solve it. It might persuade a few kids who are mildly interested in the gang life to avoid it. What is happening in Surrey, and elsewhere, is very poor parenting. If people have children and then do not take responsibility for what those children do, there isn’t enough money in the world to solve the gang problem.

It is surprising to me that this is happening in the South Asian community because traditionally they have been very forceful at imposing discipline on their kids.

Americans have spent billions on this issue over the years. South Chicago is a Beirut like war zone. This despite plenty of spending on programs, etc designed to persuade young people to avoid the gangs. Government spending is a band aid that works very poorly. Many people in Baltimore, for example, have come to see the failure of the big government program approach.

The only solution is consequences, serious consequences. And for that to happen, Surrey needs many more police officers on the ground and the so called justice system has to take this seriously as well.

Delta is frequently mentioned in the news announcements that over 22 shootings have occurred in the last 7 weeks. That would suggest that Delta is equally deserving of provincial funds to fight crime. But Mayor Lois Jackson was not present at the press conference.

That Mayor Lois Jackson did not receive an invitation to Premier Clark’s announcement of funding suggests that this was just an event designed to extricate Mayor Hepner from the Doo Doo resulting from over-promising and under-achieving on her “fight crime” election promise.

Mayor Hepner did not seem to know “which way is up” as demonstrated by her body language. That is so sad considering that she appears to be well intentioned.